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Introduction

Since the beginnings of humankind, people have gazed at the heavens. Before the dawn of history someone noticed that certain celestial bodies moved in orderly and predictable paths, and astronomy—an ancient science—was born. Yet some of science’s newest discoveries have been made in this same field, which includes the study of all matter outside Earth’s atmosphere. From simple observations of the motions of the Sun and the stars as they pass across the sky, to advanced theories of the exotic states of matter in collapsed stars, astronomy has spanned the ages.

For centuries astronomers concentrated on learning about the motions of heavenly bodies. They saw the Sun rise in the east and set in the west. In the night sky they saw tiny points of light. Most of these lights—the stars—seemed to stay in the same place in relation to one another, as if they were all fastened to a huge black globe surrounding Earth. Other lights, however, seemed to travel, going from group to group of stationary stars. They named these moving points planets, which means “wanderers” in Greek.

Ancient astronomers thought that the positions of celestial bodies revealed what was going to happen on Earth—wars, births, deaths, and good fortune or bad. This system of belief is called astrology. Most scientists no longer believe in astrology, but they have found that some ancient astrologers were good at observing the motions and positions of stars and planets.

The Visible Sky

When people today look at the sky without a telescope or other modern instrument, they see basically the same things the ancient astronomers saw. During the day one can see the Sun and sometimes a faint Moon. On a clear night one can see stars and usually the Moon. Sometimes a star may seem to be in different positions from night to night: it is really a planet, one of the “wanderers” of the ancients. The planets all circle the Sun, just as Earth does. They are visible from Earth because sunlight bounces off them. The stars are much farther away. Most stars are like the Sun—large, hot, and bright. They shine from their own energy.

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A broad strip of dim light is also visible across the night sky. It is a clustering of faint stars known as the Milky Way. The Milky Way is part of the Milky Way Galaxy—an enormous cluster of stars, of which the Sun is only one member out of more than 100 billion stars. Other galaxies exist far beyond the Milky Way.

Earth in Space

The apparent westward motion of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars is not real. They seem to move around Earth, but this apparent motion is actually caused by Earth’s movement. Earth rotates eastward, completing one rotation each day. This may be hard to believe at first because when one thinks of motion one usually also thinks of the vibrations of moving cars or trains. But Earth moves freely in space, without rubbing against anything, so it does not vibrate. It is this gentle rotation, uninhibited by significant friction, that makes the Sun, the Moon, and the stars appear to be rising and setting.

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Earth is accompanied by the Moon, which moves around the planet at a distance of about 30 Earth diameters. At the same time, Earth moves around the Sun. Every year Earth completes one revolution around the Sun. This motion, along with the tilt of Earth’s rotation axis (relative to the axis of its revolution around the Sun), accounts for the changes in the seasons. When the northern half of Earth is tipped toward the Sun, the Northern Hemisphere experiences summer and the Southern Hemisphere, which is tipped away from the Sun, experiences winter. When Earth has moved to the other side of the Sun, six months later, the seasons are reversed because the Southern Hemisphere is then tipped toward the Sun and the Northern Hemisphere is tipped away from the Sun.

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The Moon does not always look the same from Earth. Sometimes it looks round, sometimes like a thin, curved sliver. These apparent changes are called the phases of the Moon. They occur because the Moon shines only when the Sun’s light bounces off its surface. This means that only the side of the Moon that faces the Sun is bright. When the Moon is between Earth and the Sun, the light side of the Moon faces away from Earth. This is called the new moon, and it is not visible from Earth. When the Moon is on the other side of Earth from the Sun, its entire light side faces Earth. This is called the full moon. Halfway between the new and full moons, in locations on either side of Earth, are the first quarter and the last quarter (which look like half disks as viewed from Earth).

Eclipses

In ancient times people often were terrified when the Sun or the Moon seemed to disappear completely when normally it would be visible. They did not understand what caused these eclipses. Eventually, astronomers reasoned that lunar eclipses (when a previously full moon at least partly disappears from the night sky) are the result of Earth passing between the Moon and the Sun. Earth thus casts a shadow on the Moon. Similarly, solar eclipses (when the Sun partly or totally disappears from the daytime sky) occur when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun. The Moon thus blocks the Sun’s light temporarily.

Eclipses occur irregularly because the plane of the Moon’s orbit around Earth is slightly different from the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The two planes intersect at an angle of about 5 degrees. This means that the Moon is usually slightly above or below the line between Earth and the Sun, so neither Earth nor the Moon throws a shadow on the other. Eclipses can occur only when the Moon lies at one of the two points where the planes intersect. If this were not so, there would be lunar eclipses with every full moon and solar eclipses with every new moon.

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When the Moon does pass directly into Earth’s shadow, a circular darkening gradually advances across the Moon’s face, totally covering it within about an hour. Usually the Moon remains dimly visible as sunlight passes through and is refracted (bent) by Earth’s atmosphere, thus reaching the otherwise darkened lunar surface. After another hour or two, the Moon has left the shadow and again appears full. Interestingly, during the partial phases of a lunar eclipse, Earth’s shadow is easily seen to be circular. This indicated to at least some early astronomers that Earth is approximately spherical.

When the Moon’s shadow falls on Earth, a much more dramatic spectacle occurs. The shadow consists of two parts—the umbra and the penumbra. In the penumbra, the Moon blocks only part of the Sun, and on Earth many people may not notice anything unusual. The umbra, however, is the cone shaped region in which the Sun’s light is totally blocked. When the tip of this shadow reaches Earth, the Moon’s disk appears big enough in Earth’s sky to cover the Sun. This patch of darkness is rarely more than 150 miles (240 kilometers) wide. It races across Earth at over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) per hour as the Moon moves. Those in its path see the Sun completely disappear from the sky and are enveloped in darkness almost as deep as night for up to about 7 minutes.

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During totality the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, can be seen surrounding the black silhouette of the Moon’s disk. The corona is only about as bright as a full moon and is normally blotted out by the bright daytime sky. An eclipse provides a rare opportunity to see the corona.

Sometimes the umbra fails to reach Earth’s surface, meaning that the Moon is too far from Earth to appear big enough to totally cover the Sun. This leaves a thin but bright ring of sunlight at mid-eclipse. Such eclipses are called annular. They occur a bit more frequently than total eclipses do.

Only the total phase of a solar eclipse is safe to view, as looking at even a small part of the Sun can cause permanent eye damage. Various filters and other methods exist to allow safe viewing of partial phases, but even these should be used with care.

Rocks from Outer Space

Sometimes one can see a flash of light streak across the night sky and disappear. Although this is commonly called a shooting star, real stars do not shoot through the sky any more than the Sun does. Many small chunks of stone, metal, or other materials orbit the Sun. Sometimes they enter Earth’s atmosphere, and the friction generated by their great speed causes them to burn up. The fragments may either vaporize before traveling far or actually hit the ground.

These objects have different names depending on their location. One that is beyond Earth’s atmosphere is called a meteoroid. A meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere is called a meteor. A meteor that actually lands on Earth’s surface is called a meteorite.

R. Kempton/New England Meteoritical Services

Meteorites, which are sturdy enough to reach the ground, apparently are pieces of asteroids. Asteroids are huge rocks that orbit the Sun. Most meteors that burn up in the atmosphere are tiny dustlike particles, the remains of disintegrated comets. Comets are flimsy objects made mostly of frozen water, frozen gases, and some gritty material. They also orbit the Sun.

Sometimes a swarm of meteoroids enters Earth’s atmosphere, causing a meteor shower, with tens or hundreds of “shooting stars” flashing across the sky in less than an hour. Virtually all these meteors burn up in the upper atmosphere. A significant amount of dust and ash from meteors settles on Earth each day. The Leonid meteors caused the greatest meteor showers on record, in 1833 and 1966. These meteors appear every November, with especially dazzling displays about every 33 years. The Leonid meteors are so named because their motion relative to Earth makes them appear to come from the direction of the constellation Leo.

The Northern and Southern Lights

Joe Capra—Scientifantastic

People who are relatively near the North or South Pole may see one of nature’s most lavish displays—the aurora borealis (northern lights) or the aurora australis (southern lights). High in the skies over Earth’s magnetic poles, electrically charged particles from the Sun swarm down into Earth’s atmosphere. As these particles collide with air molecules, brilliant sheets, streamers, or beams of colored lights are given off at heights ranging from about 50 to 200 miles (80 to 320 kilometers) up in Earth’s atmosphere.

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The streams of charged particles are known as the solar wind. The Sun continually sends a flow of these particles out into space. During periods when the Sun is unusually active—that is, when it has large sunspots on its surface—the solar wind is particularly strong. Huge swarms of the particles then reach Earth’s atmosphere, causing large and brilliant auroras.

Tools and Techniques of Astronomy

Astronomers are at a distinct disadvantage compared with practitioners of other sciences; with few exceptions, they cannot experiment on the objects they study. Virtually all the information available is in the form of electromagnetic radiation (such as light) arriving from distant objects. Fortunately, this radiation contains an amazing number of clues to the nature of the objects emitting it.

Electromagnetic radiation travels in the form of waves, or oscillating electric and magnetic fields. In its interaction with matter, however, it is best understood as consisting of particles, called photons. These waves occur in a vast variety of frequencies and wavelengths. In order of increasing frequency (decreasing wavelength) these parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are called radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. As particles, radio wave photons carry the least amount of energy and gamma rays the most.

Telescopes

Naturally, the first part of the spectrum to be studied with instruments was visible light. Telescopes, first used for astronomy by Galileo in 1609, use lenses or mirrors to form images of distant objects. These images can be viewed directly or captured using film or electronic devices. Telescopes gather more light than the naked eye and magnify the image, allowing finer details to be seen. Even though early telescopes were crude by today’s standards, they almost immediately allowed discoveries such as the Moon’s craters, Jupiter’s moons, Saturn’s rings, Venus’s phases, sunspots, and thousands of previously unseen stars.

In the 20th century new technologies allowed the development of telescopes capable of detecting electromagnetic radiation all the way across the spectrum. Many objects emit most of their “light” at frequencies well outside the visible range. Even objects that do emit visible light often betray much more information when studied at other wavelengths.

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By the 1990s optical (visible light) telescopes reached enormous size and power, a good example being the Keck telescopes on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These two telescopes have collecting mirrors 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter, allowing detection of objects millions of times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye, with detail about a thousand times finer. Actually, astronomers seldom look through such telescopes directly. Instead, they use cameras to capture images photographically or newer, more sensitive detectors to capture images electronically. Most work is now done with electronic detectors, including charge-coupled devices (CCDs).

Since the 1940s radio telescopes have made great contributions. The largest single antenna, with a dish diameter of 1,000 feet (300 meters), is the Arecibo instrument in Puerto Rico. Huge arrays of multiple telescopes, such as the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, allow highly detailed imaging using radio waves, which otherwise yield rather “blurry” images. The largest is the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), consisting of 10 dishes scattered over an area thousands of miles across. Data from these instruments are correlated using a technique called interferometry. The level of detail that can then be seen in radio-emitting objects (such as the centers of distant galaxies) is equivalent to discerning a dime at a distance of a few thousand miles.

A tremendous advance has been the placement of astronomical instruments in space. Telescopes and other instruments aboard unmanned spacecraft have explored all the Sun’s planets at close range. At least as important, though, have been large telescopes placed in Earth orbit, above the obscuring and blurring effects of Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA

The best known of these telescopes is NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990 into an orbit 380 miles (610 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. It initially returned disappointing images, owing to a mistake in the grinding of its 94.5-inch (2.4-meter) primary mirror. In 1993 space shuttle astronauts installed corrective optics, and ever since it has returned magnificent data. While Hubble is smaller than many groundbased telescopes, the lack of air to distort the images has generally allowed it better views than can be had from the ground, leading to many discoveries. Interestingly, a technology called adaptive optics now allows many ground-based telescopes to rival Hubble’s level of detail, by removing much of the blurring effect of the atmosphere.

Less well known than Hubble but perhaps just as important are several other space telescopes that specialize in other parts of the spectrum. NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (whose mission lasted from 1991 to 2000) and Chandra X-ray Observatory (launched in 1999) have sent back a flood of data about objects such as neutron stars and black holes. These objects produce high-energy radiation that is largely blocked by Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (launched in 2003) detects a wide range of infrared radiation, which is emitted by cooler objects, including interstellar clouds of gas and dust, where stars and planets form.

Spectroscopy: What Light Tells Astronomers

Stars give off a whole range of electromagnetic radiation. The kind of radiation is related to the temperature of the star: the higher the temperature of the star, the more energy it gives off and the more this energy is concentrated in high-frequency radiation. An instrument called a spectrograph can separate radiation into the different frequencies. The array of frequencies makes up the spectrum of the star.

The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

The color of a star is also an indication of its temperature. Red light has less energy than blue light. A reddish star must have a large amount of its energy in red light. A white or bluish star has a larger amount of higher-energy blue light, so it must be hotter than the reddish star.

Stars have bright or dark lines in their spectra. These bright or dark lines are narrow regions of extra-high emission or absorption of electromagnetic radiation. The presence of a certain chemical, such as hydrogen or calcium, in the star causes a particular set of lines in the star’s spectrum. Since most of the lines found in stellar spectra have been identified with specific chemicals, astronomers can learn from a star’s spectrum what chemicals it contains.

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Spectrum lines are useful in another way, too. When an observer sees radiation coming from a source, such as a star, the frequency of the radiation is affected by the observer’s motion toward or away from the source. This is called the Doppler effect. If the observer and the star are moving away from each other, the observer detects a shift to lower frequencies. If the star and the observer are approaching each other, the shift is to higher frequencies.

Astronomers know the normal spectrum-line frequencies for many chemicals. By comparing these known frequencies with those of the same set of lines in a star’s spectrum, astronomers can tell how fast the star is moving toward or away from Earth.

Computer Modeling: Worlds Inside a Machine

While astronomers mostly cannot experiment with real astronomical objects in the laboratory, they can write computer programs to employ the laws of physics to simulate the structure and behavior of the actual objects. These models, or simulations, are never perfect, since both computing power and detailed knowledge of the structure and composition of the objects of interest are limited. In some situations, there are even uncertainties in the laws themselves. Nonetheless, these models can be adjusted until they closely match observable features and behavior of real objects.

Among the many types of astronomical phenomena that can be modeled are the evolution of stars, planetary systems, galaxies, and even the universe itself. Models of stars have successfully simulated their observed properties and supply predictions of what happens to them as they age. Other simulations have shown how planets can form from rotating clouds of gas and dust. Models of the early universe allow astronomers to study how large-scale structures such as galaxies developed as gravity accentuated tiny differences in the universe’s density. As computers and modeling techniques have improved, this has become an ever more important tool of astronomy.

The Solar System

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The solar system consists of the Sun plus all the objects that orbit it. With more than 99 percent of the solar system’s total mass and a diameter more than 100 times that of Earth and 10 times that of Jupiter, the Sun is quite naturally the center of the system. The spectrum, brightness, mass, size, and age of the Sun and of nearby stars indicate that the Sun is a typical star. Like most stars, the Sun produces energy by thermonuclear processes that take place at its core. This energy maintains the conditions needed for life on Earth.

As has been mentioned above, Earth is not the only body to circle the Sun. Many chunks of matter, some much larger than Earth and some microscopic, are caught in the Sun’s gravitational field. Eight of the largest of these chunks are called planets. Earth is the third planet from the Sun. The smaller chunks of matter include dwarf planets, natural satellites (moons), asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and the molecules of interplanetary gases.

Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion

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In the early 1600s astronomers were beginning to accept the idea that Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun, rather than that the Sun and the planets revolve around Earth. Astronomers were still unable, however, to describe the motions of the planets as accurately as they could measure them. The German astronomer Johannes Kepler was finally able to describe planetary motions using three mathematical expressions, which came to be known as Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

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In carefully studying Mars, Kepler found that its orbit is not circular, as had been assumed. Rather, the orbits of the planets are elliptical, with the Sun at one of two fixed points in the ellipse called foci. Also, as a planet travels around the Sun, its speed is greater when it is closer to the Sun. An imaginary line drawn from the moving planet to the Sun would sweep out equal areas in equal time intervals. Finally, Kepler found a mathematical relationship between a planet’s average distance from the Sun and its orbital period (the time it takes to complete an orbit). Specifically, he found that the squares of the planets’ orbital periods are proportional to the cubes of their average distances from the Sun.

To find these laws, Kepler had to effectively make a scale drawing of the solar system. He did this using extremely accurate observations collected by his deceased former employer Tycho Brahe. Kepler used a relative distance scale in which the average distance from Earth to the Sun was called one astronomical unit.

Kepler did not have a particularly accurate value for the astronomical unit. To help find this distance, later astronomers were able to use methods such as parallax, an apparent shift in an object’s position due to a difference in the observer’s position (discussed below). Even more advanced methods have determined that Earth’s average distance from the Sun is in fact 92,955,808 miles (149,597,870 kilometers).

Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation

Kepler’s laws described the positions and motions of the planets with great accuracy, but they did not explain what caused the planets to follow those paths. If the planets were not acted on by some force, scientists reasoned, they would simply continue to move in a straight line past the Sun and out toward the stars. Some force must be attracting them to the Sun.

The English scientist Isaac Newton calculated that in order for Kepler’s laws to have the form they do, this force must grow weaker with increasing distance from the Sun, in a particular way called an inverse square law. He also realized that the Moon’s curved path around Earth was a type of acceleration toward Earth. He calculated this acceleration to be much less than that of an apple falling from a tree. In comparing these accelerations, he found their difference to be described by the same inverse square law that described the force the Sun exerted on the planets. Even the orbits of the other planets’ moons could be similarly explained. Newton concluded that all masses in the universe attract each other with this universal force, which he called gravitation.

The Planets

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Up to the 18th century people knew of seven bodies, besides Earth, that moved against the background of the fixed stars. These were the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets that are easily visible to the unaided eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Then, in 1781, William Herschel, a German-born English organist and amateur astronomer, discovered a new planet, which became known as Uranus.

Uranus’s motion did not follow the exact path predicted by Newton’s theory of gravitation. This problem was happily resolved by the discovery of an eighth planet, which was named Neptune. Two mathematicians, John Couch Adams and Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier, had calculated Neptune’s probable location, but it was the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle who located the planet, in 1846.

Even then some small deviations seemed to remain in the orbits of both planets. This led to the search for yet another planet, based on calculations made by the U.S. astronomer Percival Lowell. In 1930 the U.S. astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh discovered the object that became known as Pluto.

Pluto is an icy body that is smaller than Earth’s Moon. The mass of Pluto has proved so small—about 1/500 of Earth’s mass—that it could not have been responsible for the deviations in the observed paths of Uranus and Neptune. The orbital deviations, however, had been predicted on the basis of the best estimates of the planets’ mass available at that time. When astronomers recalculated using more accurate measurements taken by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, the deviations “disappeared.”

For some 75 years astronomers considered Pluto to be the solar system’s ninth planet. This tiny distant body was found to be unusual for a planet, however, in its orbit, composition, size, and other properties. In the late 20th century astronomers discovered a group of numerous small icy bodies that orbit the Sun from beyond Neptune in a nearly flat ring called the Kuiper belt (discussed in full below). Many of Pluto’s characteristics seem similar to those of Kuiper belt objects. Several of those objects, especially Eris, are roughly the same size as Pluto. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union, the organization that approves the names of celestial objects, removed Pluto from the list of planets. Instead, it made Pluto the prototype of a new category of objects, called dwarf planets. Pluto is also considered one of the larger members of the Kuiper belt and a plutoid (a dwarf planet that is farther from the Sun than Neptune is, on average).

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All eight planets travel around the Sun in elliptical orbits that are close to being circles. Mercury has the most eccentric (least circular) orbit. All the planets travel in one direction around the Sun, the same direction in which the Sun rotates. Furthermore, all the planetary orbits lie in very nearly the same plane. Mercury’s is the most tilted, being inclined about 7 degrees relative to the plane of Earth’s orbit (the ecliptic plane). By comparison, Pluto’s orbit is tilted about 17 degrees from the ecliptic plane. Its orbit is also more eccentric than Mercury’s.

Except for Venus and Uranus, each planet rotates on its axis in a west-to-east motion. In most cases the spin axis is nearly at a right angle to the plane of the planet’s orbit. Uranus, however, is tilted so that its spin axis lies almost in its plane of orbit.

The planets can be divided into two groups. The inner planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—lie between the Sun and the asteroid belt. They are dense, rocky, and small. Since Earth is a typical inner planet, this group is sometimes called the terrestrial, or Earth-like, planets.

The outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—lie beyond the asteroid belt. They are also called the Jovian, or Jupiter-like, planets. These are much larger and more massive than the inner planets. Jupiter has 318 times Earth’s mass and in fact is more massive than all the other planets combined. Being made mostly of hydrogen and helium (mainly in liquid forms), the Jovian planets are also much less dense than the inner planets.

Natural Satellites

Six of the planets—Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—are known to have satellites. Dwarf planets and asteroids can also have moons. Because the Moon is large in comparison with Earth, the Earth-Moon system is sometimes called a double planet. Pluto’s large satellite, Charon, has just over half the diameter of Pluto, and the two are often considered a double-body system. Although several other satellites are much larger than either Earth’s Moon or Charon, these other satellites are much tinier, by comparison, than the bodies they circle.

Many of the natural satellites are fascinating worlds in their own right. Jupiter’s moon Io has numerous active volcanoes spewing sulfur compounds across its surface. Europa, Jupiter’s next moon out, may well have a vast ocean of liquid water underneath its icy crust. Neptune’s Triton has mysterious geysers erupting in spite of frigid surface temperatures near −400 °F (−240 °C).

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Also of great interest are Saturn’s moons, especially Titan and Enceladus. Titan, its largest moon, has a thick, cold, hazy atmosphere of nitrogen and methane. On its surface, drainage channels—apparently carved by showers of methane rain—cut through a crust of water ice and empty into flat areas, which may be dune fields, methane mudflats, or perhaps even liquid methane lakes. Although Enceladus is small and very cold, it is geologically active, with geysers near the south pole that spout water vapor and water ice. Measurements of Enceladus’s rotation show that there is likely an ocean under the surface covering the entire globe.

Asteroids

Photo NASA/JPL/Caltech

On January 1, 1801, the Italian astronomer Giuseppi Piazzi found a small planetlike object in the large gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This rocky object, later named Ceres, was the first and largest of thousands of asteroids, or minor planets, that have been discovered. (Ceres is now also considered a dwarf planet.) While most asteroids are found in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, there are a few others. Some cross Earth’s orbit and may present the threat of a rare collision with Earth at some time in the future.

Comets, the Oort Cloud, and the Kuiper Belt

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Comets are among the most unusual and unpredictable objects in the solar system. They are small bodies composed mostly of frozen water and gases, with some silicate grit. This composition and the nature of their orbits suggest that comets were formed before or at about the same time as the rest of the solar system.

Comets apparently originate beyond the orbit of Neptune. At such distances from the Sun, they maintain very low temperatures, preserving their frozen state. They become easily visible from Earth only if they pass close to the Sun. As a comet approaches the Sun, some of its ices evaporate. The solar wind pushes these evaporated gases away from the head of the comet and away from the Sun. This temporarily gives the comet one or more long, glowing tails that point away from the Sun.

Courtesy of the European Southern Observatory

Determining the source of comets has been a puzzle for astronomers. Some comets return to the inner solar system periodically, traveling in long, elliptical orbits that may reach from Earth’s orbit to beyond Neptune. Halley’s comet, for example, appears about every 76 years. Comets lose material with each pass near the Sun, however, and can probably survive only a few hundred such visits before their volatile materials are exhausted. This means that they could have traveled on such orbits for only a small fraction of the solar system’s widely accepted 4.6-billion-year history.

Other comets’ orbits have been traced out to tens of thousands of astronomical units and have periods of millions of years. Some of these comets may in fact be making their first ever visits to the inner solar system. Such considerations led Jan Oort in 1950 to suggest the existence of a vast, spherical cloud, containing perhaps billions of comets. Disturbances such as the gravitational influence of passing stars could deflect these comets toward the Sun.

Gerard P. Kuiper proposed in 1951 that another group of icy bodies, including dormant comets, might exist in a belt just outside Neptune’s orbit. Discoveries starting in the 1990s have confirmed Kuiper’s hypothesis, as hundreds of objects have been found at about the distance he predicted. The belt is thought to contain many millions of icy objects, most of them small. However, the largest Kuiper belt objects, including Pluto and Eris, are massive enough to also be considered dwarf planets.

Current thinking suggests that many of the short-period comets, or those that complete an orbit in less than 200 years, may have originated in the Kuiper belt. They were perhaps directed into the inner solar system by collisions with each other and gravitational encounters with Neptune. Long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud (whose existence is considered highly probable, but not proven). The cloud may have been produced long ago, as icy bodies near and inside Neptune’s orbit were thrown far out from the Sun by gravitational encounters with the outer planets.

The Origin and Future of the Solar System

The most widely accepted model for the origin of the solar system combines theories elaborated by Kuiper and Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin. Astronomers believe that about 4.6 billion years ago, one of the many dense globules of gas and dust clouds that exist in the galaxy contracted into a slowly rotating disk called the solar nebula. The hot, dense center of the disk became the Sun. The remaining outer material cooled into small particles of rock and metal that collided and stuck together, gradually growing into larger bodies to become the planets and their satellites.

In the cold outer parts of the new solar system, some of these bodies collected large amounts of hydrogen and helium from the solar nebula, thus becoming the “gas giants”—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Closer to the Sun, these light elements were mostly driven off by the higher temperatures and particles streaming off the Sun. Smaller, rocky planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—developed there. Uncollected debris became asteroids and (in the outer regions) comets.

The Sun is slowly getting brighter as it consumes its reservoir of hydrogen and turns this into helium. If current computations of stellar evolution are correct, the Sun will grow much brighter and larger in about 5 billion years, making Earth much too hot for life to endure. Later the Sun will have exhausted its nuclear energy source and will begin to cool. In the end it will become a white dwarf star, with all its matter packed densely into a space not much bigger than Earth. Around it will orbit frozen wastelands, the planets that survived the solar upheavals.

Does Life Exist Elsewhere?

JPL/NASA/University of Arizona

Life as we know it, particularly in its higher forms, can exist only under certain chemical and physical conditions. The requirements for life are not fully known, but they almost surely include a reasonable temperature range, so that chemical bonding can occur, and a source of energy, such as sunlight or heat coming from the interior of a planet. It has also been commonly assumed that a solvent such as water and some protection from ultraviolet radiation are needed. A number of environments within the solar system may meet these criteria. For example, organisms could exist in the subsurface permafrost of Mars or in an ocean under the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Some comets and asteroids contain organic matter (meaning carbon-based molecules, not necessarily resulting from life). This suggests that the basic ingredients for life are common in the solar system.

Mars is an intriguing place to look for life. Spacecraft have photographed large features that appear to be dry riverbeds. Data from NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers in the early 2000s strongly suggest that liquid water once existed on the planet’s surface. Also, data from the European Mars Express orbiter and from Earth-based telescopes suggest that methane is being released from beneath the surface, and a possible source for this could be subsurface colonies of bacteria.

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In 1976 the Viking landers looked for evidence of life in the Martian soil. They found no organic molecules. However, a couple of Viking experiments that looked for signs of metabolic processes, such as the labeled-release experiment, yielded seemingly positive results. These findings have been widely (but inconclusively) interpreted as a result of strange chemical reactions rather than life. While life has not been found on Mars, many scientists think that it may have existed in a wetter past, and some believe it may have survived into the present.

Discoveries of life existing in extreme or unusual environments on Earth—such as in hot bedrock miles beneath the surface and in colonies near volcanic vents on the deep sea floor—have widened prospects for finding life elsewhere. No place in the solar system other than Earth, however, is easily suitable for human colonization or for large land plants or animals. It is possible that other stars may be orbited by more Earth-like planets. In fact, the number of such worlds in the universe may be truly enormous. However, the only place life has been found so far is on Earth. One example is very little to go on, especially if we are part of the example. With little information regarding the likelihood of life arising in other places, even under Earth-like conditions, discussion of life elsewhere remains speculative.

The Stars

Photo AURA/STScI/NASA/JPL (NASA photo # STScI-PRC94-24a)

Looking at the night sky through a telescope, or even with the naked eye, one can see a complex display. Different cultures around the world have imagined different patterns in the way the stars appear. Constellations are groups of stars that seem to form the shapes of people, animals, or objects. The first step in finding one’s way among the stars is usually to learn to recognize a few basic constellations, such as the Big Dipper and Orion.

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The stars in constellations are not necessarily close to each other in space. For example, though the middle five stars of the Big Dipper are relatively close together, the first and last stars only seem to be in the same group. They are actually much farther from Earth than the other five, and they are even slowly moving in different directions. Some parts of Orion are relatively close together, but Betelgeuse (pronounced “beetle juice”), the bright red star at the top, is much nearer to Earth.

Coordinate Systems

Astronomers need to record the exact locations of stars. Within limits, it is useful to locate objects within constellations. Numerical coordinate systems are used to record the locations of celestial objects more precisely. These systems are like the coordinate system of latitude and longitude used for Earth.

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Different celestial coordinate systems have been devised. To be useful they must take into account that Earth has two regular motions in relation to the stars. Its rotation causes the sphere of stars to appear to make a complete circle around the planet once a day. And Earth’s revolution around the Sun causes the apparent star positions at a particular hour to shift from day to day, so that they return to their “original” position after a year.

The horizon, or azimuth, system is based on Earth’s north-south line and the observer’s horizon. It uses two angles called azimuth and altitude. Azimuth locates the star relative to the north-south line, and altitude locates it relative to the plane of the horizon. For this system to be useful, the time of the observation and the location from which the observation was made must be accurately known.

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The equator system is based on the concept of the celestial sphere. All the stars and other heavenly bodies can be imagined to be located on a huge sphere that surrounds Earth. The sphere has several imaginary lines and points. One such line is the celestial equator, which is the projection of Earth’s equator onto the celestial sphere. Another is the line of the ecliptic, which is the Sun’s apparent yearly path along this sphere. The celestial equator and the ecliptic intersect at two points, called the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. (When the Sun is at either point, day and night on Earth are equally long.) The north and south celestial poles are extensions of the North and South poles of Earth along Earth’s axis of rotation.

In the equator system the position of a star is given by coordinates called declination and right ascension. The declination locates the star by its angular distance north or south of the celestial equator. The right ascension locates the star by its angular distance east or west of the vernal equinox. Since this system is attached to the celestial sphere, all points on Earth (except the poles) are continually changing their positions under the coordinate system.

Determining the Distance to Stars

Fixing stars on an imaginary sphere is useful for finding them from Earth, but it does not reveal their actual locations. One way to measure the distances of nearby stars from Earth is the parallax method.

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For parallax measurements of stars, scientists make use of Earth’s yearly motion around the Sun. Because of this motion, observers on Earth view the stars from different positions at different times of the year. At any given time of year, Earth is 186 million miles (300 million kilometers) away on the opposite side of the Sun from where it was six months before. Two photographs of a near star taken through a large telescope six months apart will show that the star appears to shift against the background of more distant stars. If this shift is large enough to be measured, astronomers can calculate the distance to the star.

More than four centuries ago the phenomenon of parallax was used to counter Nicolaus Copernicus’s suggestion that Earth travels around the Sun. Scientists of the time pointed out that if it did, stars should show an annual change in direction due to parallax. But, using the instruments available to them, they were unable to measure any parallax, so they concluded that Copernicus was wrong. Astronomers now know that the stars are all at such tremendous distances from Earth that their parallax angles are extremely difficult to measure. Even modern instruments cannot measure the parallax of most stars.

Astronomers measure parallaxes of stars in seconds of arc. This is a tiny unit of measure; for example, a penny must be 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away before it appears as small as one second of arc. Yet no star except the Sun is close enough to have a parallax that large. Alpha Centauri, a member of the group of three stars nearest to the Sun, has a parallax of about three-quarters of a second of arc.

Astronomers have devised a unit of distance called the parsec—the distance at which the angle opposite the base of a triangle measures one second of arc when the base of the triangle is the radius of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. One parsec is equal to 19.2 trillion (19.2 × 1012) miles (30.9 trillion kilometers). Alpha Centauri is about 1.3 parsecs distant.

Two other units used to record large astronomical distances are the light-year and the astronomical unit. A light-year is the distance that light travels within a vacuum in one year. Light moving in a vacuum travels at a velocity of 186,282 miles per second (299,792,458 meters per second)—thus one light-year equals about 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers). Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri system, is the star closest to Earth (apart from the Sun), yet it is about 4.2 light-years away. This means that it takes more than four years for light from that star to reach Earth. An astronomical unit (AU) is the average distance from Earth to the Sun (about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). One light-year is equal to 63,241 AU.

Since parallax yields distances to only relatively nearby stars, other methods must be used for more distant ones. One of these methods is statistical parallax, in which the apparent motions across the sky of groups of stars are analyzed to determine their probable distance. Another method involves observing certain stars that vary regularly in brightness (discussed in the next section).

Size and Brightness of Stars

Photo AURA/STScI/NASA/JPL (NASA photo # STScI-PRC95-32)

Both the size and the temperature of a star determine how much radiation energy it gives off each second: this is the actual brightness, or luminosity, of the star. In astronomy, luminosity is defined as the amount of light emitted by an object in a unit of time. Luminosity is usually expressed in terms of solar luminosities. One solar luminosity is equal to the luminosity of the Sun, or 3.85 × 1033 ergs per second. The most luminous stars emit several million solar luminosities.

Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiant power. That is, its value does not depend on how distant the object is from an observer. However, the closer a star is to Earth, the more of its radiation energy will actually reach Earth and the brighter it will appear.

Astronomers commonly express the brightness of a star in terms of its magnitude. In general, the brighter the star, the lower its assigned magnitude. Two values of magnitude—apparent and absolute—are used to describe a star. Apparent magnitude refers to how bright the star appears from Earth. The Sun’s apparent magnitude is −26.7; the apparent magnitude of the full Moon is about −11. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, has an apparent magnitude of −1.5. In contrast, the faintest objects visible through the Hubble Space Telescope are of (approximately) apparent magnitude 30. Absolute magnitude is how bright the star would appear if viewed from a distance of 10 parsecs, or 32.6 light-years. The Sun’s absolute magnitude is 4.8. Apparent magnitude is based on the star’s size, temperature, and distance. The temperature is found from its spectrum; if the distance is known, astronomers can calculate the size of the star and assign a value for its absolute magnitude.

European Space Agency and NASA

Certain stars whose brightness varies regularly provide an important way for astronomers to estimate the distances of remote galaxies. In such stars the absolute magnitude is closely related to the period of their brightness variations. Astronomers can use the observed period to determine the absolute magnitude and then compare this with the apparent brightness to estimate the distance.

Astronomers have discovered all kinds of stars—from huge, brilliant red supergiants more than 100 times the Sun’s diameter to extremely dense neutron stars only about a dozen miles across. The Sun lies in about the middle range of size and brightness of stars. The largest stars are the cool, reddish supergiants: they have low surface temperatures, but they are so bright that they must be extremely large to give off that much energy. White dwarf stars, on the other hand, are very faint in spite of their high surface temperatures and thus must be very small—only about the size of Earth.

What Is a Star?

Astronomers have found, using analysis of stars’ spectra, that stars are made mostly of the simplest elements: hydrogen and helium. These elements are in the gaseous state. In most of the star, however, the temperature is so high (thousands to millions of degrees) that the gas is ionized (with electrons stripped away from the atomic nuclei)—a state called plasma.

The mutual gravitational attraction of a star’s matter is what forces it into a roughly spherical shape. In fact, if there were nothing to counteract this inward force, the star would collapse to a very small size. The gravitational squeezing of the gas, however, heats it to very high temperatures. In the 1800s astronomers believed that this compression was actually the energy source for a star. This presented a problem. The Sun could shine like this for only a few million years without shrinking so much that conditions on Earth would be greatly altered. Yet geological and biological evidence suggested that Earth has maintained the conditions for life for hundreds of millions of years.

The 20th century brought a solution to this problem. With the discovery of nuclear energy, astronomers could explain the Sun’s long-lasting power output as the result of nuclear fusion: hydrogen deep inside the Sun was being fused together to form helium. This process is so energetic that it can counterbalance the inward force of gravity. Stars, then, are essentially battlegrounds between two forces—the inward crush of gravity and the outward pressure from the heat generated by nuclear fusion.

The Lives of Stars

NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Stars are believed to form when large clouds of gas and dust, called nebulae, contract gravitationally (though other forces may also play a role). Eventually they become hot enough (several million degrees) in the center to start fusion of hydrogen into helium. By this time, the gas is glowing brightly, and a star is born.

This cannot last forever, though, as eventually most of the hydrogen “fuel” is converted into helium. In the largest stars, this takes only a few million years. Very-low-mass stars, with less gravitational pressure to battle, consume their fuel very slowly and may last a trillion years. The Sun is intermediate, with an estimated lifetime of about 10 billion years, which it is believed to be almost halfway through.

NASA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, and NASA

When a star’s core has been converted mainly into helium, dramatic changes occur in its structure. Computer models, backed up by observations of many stars at different stages, predict that stars like the Sun will swell to about a hundred times their former diameter. After a relatively short period as such a red giant, the star will lose its outer layers, leaving a small, hot core. The core will then shrink to form a white dwarf star. Hundreds of such objects have been observed, generally confirming the predictions.

Stars born with much more mass than the Sun undergo even more dramatic events. Under tremendous pressure, such a star performs numerous additional fusion reactions in its core, producing a wide range of elements, up to and including iron. At this point, the ultradense core can collapse suddenly, leading to a colossal explosion called a supernova. Many such events have been observed from Earth, some so bright that they were visible in broad daylight. For a few weeks the exploding star can outshine an entire galaxy of a hundred billion stars. The elements thrown out into space can become part of nebulae, eventually to be incorporated into future generations of stars and planets.

Neutron Stars and Black Holes

After some types of supernova explosions, an extremely dense core remains. This object, called a neutron star, is about the mass of the Sun and is made mostly of neutrons. Its matter is so compact that a teaspoon of it has the mass of a small mountain. Some neutron stars spin rapidly while beaming radiation into space. If a beam intercepts Earth, astronomers may detect it as a series of pulses of radio waves or sometimes radiation at other wavelengths. Such a neutron star is referred to as a pulsar.

Walter Jaffe/Leiden Observatory, Holland Ford/JHU/STScI, and NASA

Even more massive stars may collapse to such high densities that their powerful gravitational pull will not allow even light, or anything else, to escape. They are called black holes. Black holes resulting from the collapse of a single, dying star may be only several miles across, but much larger ones—with the mass of millions of suns and the size of the solar system—are suspected to exist in the centers of many galaxies.

Often, neutron stars and black holes are detectable only because of their effects on nearby companion stars. Gas (mainly hydrogen) is drawn off the companion star and then swirls rapidly down onto (or into) the neutron star or black hole. The violent compressional heating and acceleration of the gas causes it to emit X-rays, which can be detected from Earth-based satellites. Such double star systems are called X-ray binaries.

Planets of Other Stars

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Astronomers have long thought that, like the Sun, many or most stars should be accompanied by orbiting planets. These planets would be so distant from Earth, however, that their very faint light would be drowned out by the bright light of their “suns.” It turns out that there are indirect methods of detecting such planets, called extrasolar planets or exoplanets. An orbiting planet would cause a star to wobble slightly, and this wobble could be detected as alternating red and blue Doppler shifts of the star’s light. Furthermore, the speed and period of the wobble could enable astronomers to estimate the planet’s mass and distance from the star. This technique was first successfully used in 1995 to find a planet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. During the next 10 years, about 140 extrasolar planets were discovered in this way (plus a few by other means, such as the dip in light caused when a planet passes in front of a star).

In 2008 astronomers announced the discovery of the first extrasolar planets seen directly in images. Images taken with telescopes at the Keck and Gemini North observatories revealed three planets orbiting the star HR 8799, about 128 light-years from Earth. A fourth planet in that extrasolar planetary system was discovered in 2010. Direct imaging of an extrasolar planet can be done by using starlight reflected off the planet or thermal infrared radiation emitted by the planet. Imaging works best for planets orbiting stars that are nearest to the Sun. Infrared imaging is especially sensitive to young massive planets that orbit far from their star.

Many of the earliest extrasolar planets identified are at least as massive as Jupiter, yet they are closer to their stars than Mercury is to the Sun. Such close-in, massive planets should be the easiest to detect, since they cause the greatest wobbles. But they are still a challenge to explain. Current theories of planet formation suggest that such large planets should form farther from the star, where temperatures are cold enough to allow collection of large amounts of gas. One possibility astronomers are considering is that these “hot Jupiters” formed farther out from their stars and migrated inward. This raises the question, though, of why our solar system has not experienced such planetary migration.

Kepler mission/Ames Research Center/NASA

A few thousand extrasolar planets have now been identified. More than two thousand of them were discovered by Kepler, a U.S. satellite launched in 2009 to detect planets orbiting other stars. Among Kepler’s many discoveries were the first Earth-sized extrasolar planets and the first planets to be found orbiting within the habitable zone of a star like the Sun. The habitable zone is the orbital region around a star in which an Earth-like planet can possess liquid water on its surface and thus possibly support life. Kepler-186f, discovered in 2014, was the first Earth-sized planet to be found within its star’s habitable zone. More than 20 such planets—roughly Earth-sized planets orbiting within the habitable zones of their stars—have now been found. Among them is the closest extrasolar planet to Earth, Proxima Centauri b, which was discovered in 2016 using telescopes of the European Southern Observatory(ESO). The planet orbits the Sun’s nearest neighbor, about 4.2 light-years away.

Interstellar Matter

VLT/ESO

The space between the stars contains gas and dust at extremely low densities. This matter tends to clump into clouds. These clouds are called nebulae when they block more distant starlight, reflect starlight, or get heated by stars so that they glow. Interstellar dust is made of fine particles or grains. Although only a few of these grains are spread through a cubic mile of space, the distances between the stars are so great that the dust can block the light from distant stars. Many small, dark regions are known where few or no stars can be seen. These are dark nebulae, dust clouds of higher than average density that are thick enough to obscure the light beyond them.

Dust grains block blue light more than red light, so the color of a star can appear different if it is seen through much dust. To find the temperature of such a star, astronomers must estimate its color to be bluer than it appears because so much of its blue light is lost in the dust. When clouds of dust occur near bright stars they often reflect the starlight in all directions. Such clouds are known as reflection nebulae.

Interstellar gas is about 100 times denser than the dust but still has an extremely low density. The gas does not interfere with starlight passing through it, so it is usually difficult to detect. When a gas cloud occurs close to a hot star, however, the star’s radiation causes the gas to glow. This forms a type of bright nebula known as an H II region. Away from hot stars interstellar gas is quite cool. Masses of this cool gas are called H I regions.

Courtesy of Palomar Observatory/California Institute of Technology

Interstellar gas, like most stars, consists mainly of the lightest element, hydrogen, with small amounts of helium and only traces of the other elements. The hydrogen readily glows in the hot H II regions. In the cool H I regions the hydrogen gives off radio-frequency radiation. Most interstellar gas can be located only by detecting these radio waves.

The hydrogen occurs partly as single atoms and partly as molecules (two hydrogen atoms joined together). Molecular hydrogen is even more difficult to detect than atomic hydrogen, but it must exist in abundance. Other molecules have been found in the interstellar gas because they give off low-frequency radiation. These molecules contain other atoms besides hydrogen: oxygen or carbon occurs in hydroxyl radicals (OH−) and in carbon monoxide (CO), formaldehyde (H2CO), and many others, including many organic molecules.

NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)

Wherever there are large numbers of young stars, there are also large quantities of interstellar gas and dust. New stars are constantly being formed out of the gas and dust in regions where the clouds have high densities. Although many stars blow off part of their material back into the interstellar regions, the gas and dust are slowly being used up. Astronomers theorize that eventually a time will be reached when no new stars can be formed, and the star system will slowly fade as the stars burn out one by one.

The Galaxies

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Stars are found in huge groups called galaxies. Scientists estimate that the larger galaxies may contain as many as a trillion stars, while the smallest may have fewer than a million. Large galaxies may be 100,000 or more light-years in diameter.

Galaxies may have any of four general shapes. Elliptical galaxies show little or no structure and vary in general shape from moderately flat and round or oval to spherical. Spiral galaxies have a small, bright central region, or nucleus, and arms that come out of the nucleus and wind around, trailing off like a giant pinwheel. In barred spiral galaxies, the arms extend sideways in a short straight line before turning off into the spiral shape. Both kinds of spiral systems are flat. Irregular galaxies are usually rather small and do not have a symmetrical shape.

Radio Galaxies, Quasars, and Dark Matter

Galaxies were long thought to be more or less passive objects, containing stars and interstellar gas and dust and shining by the radiation that their stars give off. When astronomers became able to make accurate observations of radio frequencies coming from space, they were surprised to find that a number of galaxies emit large amounts of energy in the radio region. Ordinary stars are so hot that most of their energy is emitted in visible light, with little energy emitted at radio frequencies. Furthermore, astronomers were able to deduce that this radiation had been given off by charged particles of extremely high energy moving in magnetic fields.

Courtesy of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory/Associated Universities, Inc.

How do such galaxies, called radio galaxies, manage to give so much energy to the charged particles and magnetic fields? Radio galaxies are also usually rather peculiar in appearance. Many galaxies, and the radio galaxies in particular, show evidence of interstellar matter expanding away from their centers, as though gigantic explosions had taken place in their nuclei. The giant elliptical galaxy known as M87 has a jet of material nearby that it apparently ejected in the past. The jet itself is the size of an ordinary galaxy.

Astronomers have found that, in many galaxies, stars near the center move very rapidly, apparently orbiting some very massive unseen object. The most likely explanation is that a giant black hole, with millions or even billions of times the Sun’s mass, lurks in the center of most large galaxies. As stars and gas spiral into these black holes, much of their mass vanishes from sight. The violent heating and compression produces a huge release of energy, including high-speed jets of matter (such as in M87).

John Bahcall, Institute for Advanced Study, NASA

Very distant galaxies are sometimes found to have extremely energetic sources of light and radio waves at their centers. These objects, called quasars, are generally believed to be several billion light-years from Earth. This means that astronomers who observe quasars are actually peering several billion years into the past. Most astronomers believe that quasars represent an early phase in the life of some galaxies, when the central black holes, with plenty of fresh gas and stars to consume, were generating huge amounts of energy.

Another problem has puzzled astronomers for years. Most, if not all, galaxies occur in clusters, presumably held together by the gravity of the cluster members. When the motions of the cluster members are measured, however, it is found in almost every case that the galaxies are moving too fast to be held together only by the gravity of the matter that is visible. Astronomers believe there must be a large amount of unseen matter in these clusters—perhaps 10 times as much as can be seen. While some of this likely consists of objects such as black holes and neutron stars, most of it is believed to be “exotic dark matter,” of unknown origin.

The Milky Way Galaxy

Like most stars, the Sun belongs to a galaxy. Since the Sun and Earth are embedded in the galaxy, it is difficult for astronomers to obtain an overall view of this galaxy. In fact, what can be seen of its structure is a faint band of stars called the Milky Way (the word galaxy comes from the Greek word for “milk”). Because of this, the galaxy has been named the Milky Way Galaxy.

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The visible band of the Milky Way seems to form a great circle around Earth. This indicates that the galaxy is fairly flat rather than spherical. (If it were spherical, the stars would not be concentrated in a single band.) The Sun is located on the inner edge of a spiral arm. The center, or nucleus, of the galaxy is about 27,000 light-years distant, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. All the stars that are visible without a telescope belong to the Milky Way Galaxy.

Not all the galaxy’s stars are confined to the galactic plane. There are a few stars that occur far above or below the disk. They are usually very old stars, and they form what is called the halo of the galaxy. Evidently the galaxy was originally a roughly spherical mass of gas. Its gravity and rotation caused it to collapse into the disklike shape it has today. The stars that had been formed before the collapse remained in their old positions, but after the collapse further star formation could occur only in the flat disk.

All the stars in the galaxy move in orbits around its center. The Sun takes about 200 million years to complete an orbit. The orbits of most of these stars are nearly circular and are nearly in the same direction. This gives a sense of rotation to the galaxy as a whole, even as the entire galaxy moves through space.

Dark clouds of dust almost completely obscure astronomers’ view of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Radio waves penetrate the dust, however, so radio telescopes can provide astronomers with a view of the galactic nucleus. In that region stars travel in very fast, tight orbits—which implies the existence of a huge mass at the center. The Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected flares of X-rays lasting only a few minutes in the region, which are best explained by the existence of a black hole that is violently accelerating and compressing in-falling blobs of matter. Infrared observations made at the ESO demonstrated that this supermassive black hole has a mass about 4.3 million times that of the Sun.

The Universe

Cosmology is the scientific inquiry into the nature, history, development, and fate of the universe. By making assumptions that are not contradicted by the behavior of the observable universe, scientists build models, or theories, that attempt to describe the universe as a whole, including its origin and its future. They use each model until something is found that contradicts it. Then the model must be modified or discarded.

Cosmologists usually assume that, except for small irregularities, the universe has a similar appearance to all observers (and the laws of physics are identical), no matter where in the universe the observers are located or in which direction they look. This unproven concept is called the cosmological principle. One consequence of the cosmological principle is that the universe cannot have an edge, for an observer near the edge would have a different view from that of someone near the center. Thus space must be infinite and evenly filled with matter, or the geometry of space must be such that all observers see themselves as at the center. Also, astronomers believe that the only motion that can occur, except for small irregularities, is a uniform expansion or contraction of the universe.

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Because the universe appears to be expanding, it seems that it must have been smaller in the past. This is the basis for evolutionary theories of the universe. If one could trace the galaxies back in time, one would find a time at which they were all close together. Observations of the expansion rate indicate that this was between 13 and 14 billion years ago. Thus emerges a picture of an evolving universe that started in some kind of “explosion”—the big bang. Some models of the universe have the expansion continuing forever. Others say that it will stop and be followed by a contraction back to a small volume again. However, data obtained since the late 1990s on the recession speeds of distant supernovas have strongly suggested that the expansion is actually accelerating. This may mean the universe will expand forever. Astronomers are currently trying to explain this acceleration. A current favorite explanation is the idea of dark energy, which might provide a repulsive force that counteracts (and on large scales, overwhelms) the universe’s mutual gravitational attraction.

In the 1950s and 1960s there was a rival model, called the steady state theory. The basic assumption of steady state was a perfect cosmological principle, applying to time as well as position. The steady state theory stated that the universe must have the same large-scale properties at all times; it cannot evolve, but must remain uniform. Since the universe is seen to be expanding, which would spread the matter out thinner as time goes on, steady state suggested that new matter must be created to maintain the constant density. In the steady state theory galaxies are formed, they live and die, and new ones come along to take their places at a rate that keeps the average density of matter constant.

When astronomers observe an object at a great distance, they are seeing it as it looked long ago, because it takes time for light to travel. A galaxy viewed at a distance of a billion light-years is seen as it was a billion years ago. Distant galaxies do seem to be different from nearby galaxies. They seem closer together than nearby ones, contrary to steady state contentions but consistent with the view that the universe had a greater density in the past. Also, a faint glow of radiation has been discovered coming uniformly from all directions. Calculations show that this could be radiation left over from the big bang.

The History of Astronomy

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The ruins of many ancient structures indicate that their builders observed the motions of the Sun, Moon, and other celestial bodies. The most famous of these is probably England’s Stonehenge, which was built between about 3100 and 1550 bc. Some of the monument’s large stones were aligned in relationship to the position of the rising Sun on the summer solstice. Several hundreds of other ancient structures showing astronomical alignment also have been found in Europe, Egypt, and the Americas.

In many early civilizations astronomy was sufficiently advanced that reliable calendars had been developed. In ancient Egypt astronomer-priests were responsible for anticipating the season of the annual flooding of the Nile River. The Maya, who lived in what is now central Mexico, developed a complicated calendar system about 2,000 years ago. The Dresden Codex, a Mayan text from the 1st millennium ad, contains exceptionally accurate astronomical calculations, including tables predicting eclipses and the movements of Venus.

In China a calendar had been developed by the 14th century bc. About 350 bc a Chinese astronomer, Shih Shen, drew up what may be the earliest star catalog, listing about 800 stars. Chinese records mention comets, meteors, large sunspots, and novas.

The early Greek astronomers knew many of the geometric relationships of the heavenly bodies. Some, including Aristotle, thought Earth was a sphere. Eratosthenes, born about 276 bc, demonstrated its circumference. Hipparchus, who lived about 140 bc, was a prolific and talented astronomer. Among many other accomplishments, he classified stars according to apparent brightness, estimated the size and distance of the Moon, found a way to predict eclipses, and calculated the length of the year to within 61/2 minutes.

The most influential ancient astronomer historically was Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus) of Alexandria, who lived about ad 140. His geometric scheme predicted the motions of the planets. In his view, Earth occupied the center of the universe. His theory approximating the true motions of the celestial bodies was held steadfastly until the end of the Middle Ages.

In medieval times Western astronomy did not progress. During those centuries Hindu and Arab astronomers kept the science alive. The records of the Arab astronomers and their translations of Greek astronomical treatises were the foundation of the later upsurge in Western astronomy.

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In 1543, the year of Copernicus’s death, came the publication of his theory that Earth and the other planets revolved around the Sun. His suggestion contradicted all the authorities of the time and caused great controversy. Galileo supported Copernicus’s theory with his observations that other celestial bodies, the satellites of Jupiter, clearly did not circle Earth.

The great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe rejected Copernicus’s theory. Yet his data on planetary positions were later used to support that theory. When Tycho died, his assistant, Johannes Kepler, analyzed Tycho’s data and developed the laws of planetary motion. In 1687 Newton’s law of gravitation and laws of motion explained Kepler’s laws.

Meanwhile, the instruments available to astronomers were growing more sophisticated. Beginning with Galileo, the telescope was used to reveal many hitherto invisible phenomena, such as the revolution of satellites about other planets.

The development of the spectroscope in the early 1800s was a major step forward in the development of astronomical instruments. Later, photography became an invaluable aid to astronomers. They could study photographs at leisure and make microscopic measurements on them. Even more recent instrumental developments—including radar, telescopes that detect electromagnetic radiation other than visible light, and space probes and manned spaceflights—have helped answer old questions and have opened astronomers’ eyes to new problems.

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